South Shore-St. Margaret’s MP Gerald Keddy will not reoffer in the 2015 election.

He is the second Nova Scotia incumbent to announce he will not seek re-election. Greg Kerr, also a Conservative, announced last week he will not run again in West Nova.

Keddy has been an MP for 17 years. He was first elected as a Progressive Conservative in the riding of South Shore in 1997. It was the first of six consecutive victories.

“That’s a long time in any career. And let’s be honest, politics is a tough business,” Keddy said in an interview.

He said that when he was first elected, he told himself he would stick with it for 10 years. But when that time came, the PCs had merged into the Conservative Party of Canada and formed the government.

“When you’re in government, quite frankly, it’s exciting. There’s a lot that needs to be done and there’s a lot you can do in government. So I hung to it up until this point in time.”

Now 61, Keddy said he will look for future opportunities but for now he plans to go back to his home in New Ross, where he was raised, and do some farming.

The South Shore-St. Margaret’s riding will shift in 2015, inching closer to Halifax as far as Old Sambro Road.

Parties have crunched the numbers to see how their seats will be affected. Keddy said his party’s calculations show that his victory of almost 3,000 votes in the 2011 election would have been a bit higher under the new boundaries.

The local Conservative riding association has formed a selection committee and is expected to reach out to a half-dozen potential candidates.

Keddy’s main rival over the years has been former Halifax West MP Gordon Earle. Earle ran as an NDP candidate against Keddy in the past four elections, finishing second in the last three.

Keddy’s margin of victory over Earle has ranged from about 1,000 to 4,000 votes in recent elections.

Reached by phone Monday evening, Earle said he isn’t planning to run again next year but hasn’t made a final decision.

“At the moment, I don’t have any leaning in that direction,” he said.

In the 2011 election, all 11 Nova Scotia ridings had incumbents. The next race could have three vacancies.

Sackville-Eastern Shore MP Peter Stoffer has said he may retire after this session of Parliament. The New Democrat has said he will not make a final decision until the election is closer.

Keddy now serves as parliamentary secretary for the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and National Revenue.

His wife, Judy Streatch, is a former provincial cabinet minister who now works as a principal in the Acadian school board region.